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Gizmodo, Engadget, and Now GDGT

SAN FRANCISCO — In the beginning, circa 2002, there was Gizmodo, a Web site with news and reviews of mobile phones, digital cameras other electronic toys that became the foundation of the Gawker network of Web sites.

In 2004, Gizmodo’s founder, Peter Rojas, left to start a rival gadget blog, Engadget, which was later acquired by AOL. Ever since, the two sites have slugged it out, profitably competing for scoops and a growing audience of obsessed gearheads. In the process, similar gadget sites have sprouted like weeds around the Web. (The New York Times has its own site, Gadgetwise.)

Now Mr. Rojas, and his former colleague at Engadget, Ryan Block, have defected from that world, where teams of reporters are paid to write the material, and created yet another new gadget site that will lean heavily on users to provide information and reviews.

Their new site, called GDGT, will open to visitors on Wednesday. It differs from Engadget or Gizmodo by aspiring to be a gadget-oriented social network. Users of the site can create profiles and specify which consumer electronics devices they have, had or want to buy. Then they can talk about those devices with other owners, discuss new trends and tips, and decide how and when to replace them.

Mr. Block, 27, says most gadget sites cater only to 5 percent of a gadget’s lifecycle — the “lust phase.” He said that for “the 95 percent of the time you own the product there is nowhere to go. We are building the place where you can live with your gadgets online in perpetuity.”

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The GDGT founders, whose expertise in consumer electronics has earned them a considerable online following, will not themselves be reviewing gadgets. Rather, they will linking to news and reviews on other sites, and will invite GDGT users to evaluate their devices. All reviews must be over 200 words, to guard against pithily uninformative reviews, like “this phone rocks!”

GDGT will also have information to help users compare devices and links to online stores where they can make purchases. The site plans later to develop a marketplace for people to sell their devices once they are done. For its advertisers, GDGT will know what devices its users own and which ones they want. Research in Motion, maker of the BlackBerry, has signed on as the exclusive advertiser for the first month. It will run banner ads made to look similar to other content on the site — inviting people to add a RIM phone to their wish list, for example. The ads are clearly labeled as a sponsorship.